Fixing the "Too many open files" error

Problem

The default number of open files on Red Hat Linux 5 is 1024. Jive SBS requires a much higher limit for this. Not only does Jive open and close several files at once, but connections to ports are bundled in this limit as well. When a connection to a port is closed, it can hang in an open state for up to 3 minutes. If these connections are opened and closed rapidly, the number of open files can quickly spike to the limit.

If you reach the limit of open files, you will see something similar to this in the logs: